May 16th, 2009

Automation 2.0

Posted by Kevin O'Marah @ 7:55 am

Categories: Enterprise Architecture, Supply Chain

Tags: Automation, Nosbusch, Manufacturing, AMR Research

Yesterday the AMR team met with Rockwell Automation’s senior leadership group including CEO Keith Nosbusch to spend an entire day digging into the trends and challenges in today’s manufacturing automation market.  Nosbusch is a graduate of University of Wisconsin’s electrical and computer engineering program, and a 35 year veteran of the automation industry.  As the father of Logix, which is Rockwell’s integrated control platform for manufacturing automation, Nosbusch deserves credit for a pretty big chunk of our national productivity miracle over the past few decades.  Despite these stellar credentials, my impression of Nosbusch was of a guy who is humble, level-headed, and yet surprisingly visionary.  My Badger friends may reluctantly admit that these are typical traits of a UW grad. 

So what’s the deal with Automation 2.0?

That’s my shorthand name for a wave of manufacturing investment that I believe is fast approaching on the horizon and will radically improve the capital, labor, and energy efficiency of all kinds of large scale manufacturing.  Having worked closely for years with vendors whose products are supposed to improve the global supply chain, I think Rockwell and their kin have something to offer that stands to trump most of what the ERP, SCM, CRM and other alphabet soup tech-vendors have given us.  The key is smarter, more flexible, more adaptible production equipment enabled with a stack of IT that will connect work centers within plants to all manner of input streams and output streams. 

It sounds familiar enough, and of course, lacks some of the glamour of fancy optimization or snazzy web services, but in practice this technology layer is ready for a breakthrough.  The hint I saw yesterday was in an 18 month old alliance with Dassault Systemes to do integrated product and manufacturing process design.  This notion, which is certainly understood by rival Siemens who went so far as buy UGS for its PLM and factory simulation capabilities, promises not just better plants, but better supply networks.  In isolation, design for manufacture and factory simulation are cool enough.  In conjunction with a platform that integrates ever smarter machinery with business flows outside of the plant and outside of the company, the idea can deliver multiplicative impact.

During our meeting the comment was made that manufacturing jobs may be going away, but the ones that remain are becoming very brain intensive.  Amen.  The whole idea of automation is to eliminate repetitive human labor with capital, and in the process, deliver more precision, repeatability, and control.  In an ideal world (post Automation 2.0) there will no longer be any dehumanizing, rote, pure labor jobs in manufacturing.  These will all be handled safely and efficiently by machines, leaving people to design new products, find and serve customers, and make business decisions trading off production and sourcing locations in sync with optimal balances of material prices, energy costs, and market proximity. 

What astonishes me still is the relative lack of excitement about this whole movement.  Admittedly, my colleagues at AMR (Roddy Martin, Simon Jacobson, Bill Polk, and PLM genius Mike Burkett) know alot more about this than I do, but I still wonder; why does it seem so amazing to me, and yet so mundane to others in the world of supply chain technology?  I started with a profile of Rockwell CEO Nosbusch to make a point about humility, and while I admire it, I feel compelled to give this guy some kudos for what has been done so far and a push to keep the good work going. 

Automation 2.0 can revolutionize manufacturing worldwide, and in the process free our children to pursue careers based on brains, not brawn.  Keep it up Keith.

April 10th, 2009

Next big land rush: believe it or not, is knowledge management

Posted by Kevin O'Marah @ 8:11 am

Categories: ERP, Enterprise Architecture, Intellectual Property, Supply Chain, Supply Chain Applications

Tags: Supply Chain, Collaboration, Knowledge, IP, Entertainment, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Knowledge Management, Strategy, Network Technology, Networking

This sounds silly for anyone who has ever been involved in the typical hapless library exercise of a digital “knowledge management” initiative.  The lasting image for most of these efforts is of a black hole - everything goes in, nothing comes out.  But get ready for a change of tune.

The root of this is an exploding need among all players up and down the global supply chain to harness and leverage their intellectual property without giving up control or worse, having it hijacked and used against them.  An example is the kind of engineering intensive knowledge stored in the heads of thousands of soon-to-retire manufacturing process guys in the chemicals industry.  I talked to ExxonMobil about this and found they’re keen to solve it before the IP ends up sitting on a beach in Florida somewhere.  At the exact opposite end of the spectrum is the issue of managing IP for a company like Hasbro.  They have pure entertainment images that will manifest as profitable toys like Barbie, unless someone raids the files and dumps a load of cheap counterfeit knockoffs onto the market.

How do you capture, catalog, update, distribute, and otherwise collaborate on knowledge (i.e., IP) when it ranges from expertise to trademarks?  It turns out practically every technology vendor category has an answer for you.  Collaboration vendors from little guys like Jive to big guys like OpenText have a story.  B2B and EDI guys like Sterling Commerce, GXS, and Inovis are part of the puzzle.  PLM guys like Dassault, PTC or Siemens are certainly in the mix.  Digital Rights Management vendors have been thought of largely in terms of media and entertainment uses, but players like Adobe, EMC, and even Oracle (with its Stellent property) deserve a look on this front.  Plus the security vendors like Symantec, EMC and RSA need to be considered.  And finally, all the platform guys figure into the equation - IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle all appear across the board with “solutions” in each of these categories.

The net of it all is that manufacturers and retailers across sectors will absolutely need to handle the question of how IP works its way around the global supply chain.  One worry: letting Microsoft Sharepoint creep in as the defacto standard for management of IP in interenterprise collaboration.  Its so easy to set up and start using… it naturally links to your most familiar workspace, namely Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of MSOffice.  But where is the control and scalability?  I’m not saying Microsoft can’t do it, just that renegade groups of employees doing it on their own will almost definitely end up making a mess, and possibly and expensive one.

Missing from the list of vendors with a solid pitch here is SAP.  The ERP backbone of choice for so many companies may have a stranglehold on transactions, but they lack punch when it comes to interenterprise collaboration, relying on partners like Seeburger and Crossgate.  This may seem a sideshow in Walldorf, but every industry is beginning to see the value of stuff that is presently flying around the digital supply chain, largely unsupervised.

I’d love to hear ideas on how best to map out a strategy for this problem.

April 6th, 2009

Sun and IBM Breaking Up: Who Wins?

Posted by Kevin O'Marah @ 10:00 am

Categories: Enterprise Architecture, Supply Chain

Tags: Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM Corp., Supply Chain Management (SCM), Programming Languages, Java, Enterprise Software, Software, Software Development, Software/Web Development, AMR Research

The news today about IBM and Sun possibly going separate ways leaves a door open for others to dodge what could have been a pretty blockbuster combination.  I remember back in late 90’s how cool Java was and what it meant for Sun.  Unfortunately, the heavily engineer-driven culture at Sun kept what could have been a dominant computing pioneer from realizing its potential.  IBM, meanwhile learned the lesson of having business process and financial discipline govern ideas to make sure they are realized.  Sun still has some brilliant engineers and IBM certainly has a handle on how to build an integrated global supply chain.  The coolness of Java, plus a $3B+ R&D organization, and a hub of talent in the vital San Francisco bay area makes Sun a plum for someone like IBM.

If the breakup holds who wins?  How about Hewlett Packard.  Not only is H-P a titan on the scale of IBM (actually bigger), it is also great at running an integrated global supply chain (see Tony Prophet of H-P explain what they do at our upcoming conference) and positioned to do alot with Java and the R&D pool by applying it to a huge range of consumer and business computing applications.  A similar argument can easily be made for Cisco Systems.

If cooler heads prevail the IBM-Sun combo will go ahead.  There wasn’t much keeping the two sides apart over the weekend and the logic of the deal for IBM includes a lot of potential benefit for IBM customers looking for better systems links - a solid stream of profit opportunity that Big Blue has to like.

March 19th, 2009

IBM and Sun: Is it about the hardware or the software?

Posted by Ian Finley @ 8:02 am

Categories: Enterprise Applications, Enterprise Architecture

Tags: Software, Revenue, Sun Microsystems Inc., Hardware, IBM Corp., Programming Languages, Java, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ian Finley

The Wall Street Journal reports IBM is in acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems. At this point, the companies are refusing to comment on the rumor. If it comes to pass, the acquisition would give IBM a larger share of the high-end server and storage markets and enhanced access to certain customers, especially in the financial services and telecommunications industries. However, the software aspect of the deal might have a larger impact on IBM and the industry as a whole.

Today, IBM is best thought of as a services and software company with a computer hardware division. In 2008, services and software represented 79% of IBM’s revenue and 82% of its pre-tax income. In contrast, hardware represented only 19% of revenue and 9% of pre-tax income. The Sun acquisition would undoubtedly boost IBM hardware revenue and might improve hardware profitability, but the positive impact to IBM’s services and software businesses could easily dwarf these benefits. Read the rest of this entry »

March 12th, 2009

Microsoft Convergence 2009: Hybrid Technology

Posted by Chris Fletcher @ 7:26 am

Categories: CRM, Enterprise Architecture

Tags: Team, Industry, Microsoft Corp., Convergence, Hybrids, xRM, Dynamics CRM, Team Management, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Management

Hybrids are the buzz in the auto industry, and now hybrid applications may be the next buzz in technology, both in licensed, behind-the-firewall mode as well as developed and hosted in the cloud.

I spent time with Brad Wilson, GM of Microsoft’s Dynamic CRM team, and some executives from Avanade, Microsoft’s BPO/SI joint venture with Accenture.  Microsoft and its larger SI partners plan to put some serious weight behind xRM in the coming months.  But wait, what’s xRM?

xRM describes applications built on Dynamics CRM that don’t use the CRM application functionality.  xRM (the “x” implies it can be used to underpin a variety of industry or use-specific applications) has tight integration with the Microsoft stack — .NET, SQL, et al — and will also, along with the Dynamics CRM app, likely be available as a cloud-based resource via Azure.  Read the rest of this entry »

February 19th, 2009

When the building’s on fire, who calls an architect?

Posted by Ian Finley @ 1:46 pm

Categories: Enterprise Architecture

Tags:

No one does.  They call the fire department.

This year, manufacturers and retailers need more IT fire fighters and fewer enterprise architects.  And those fire fighters need axes, ladders and hoses; not enterprise service buses or SOA governance suites.  Companies are fighting for their lives and employees are fighting for their livelihoods.   Enterprise architects and SOA vendors had better wake up and smell the smoke. Read the rest of this entry »